by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER XII.
MONSEIGNEUR'S SOLITUDE.
There is nearly always round a bishop a squad of little abb?s, asthere is a swarm of young officers round a general. They are what thatdelightful St. Francis de Sales calls somewhere "sucking priests."Every career has its aspirants, who pay their respects to those whohave reached the goal; there is not a power without its following, nota fortune without its court. The seekers for a future buzz round thesplendid present. Every metropolitan has his staff: every bishop who isat all influential has his patrol of Seminarist Cherubim, who go therounds, maintain order in the episcopal palace, and mount guard roundMonseigneur's smile. Pleasing a bishop is a foot in the stirrup for asub-deaconry; after all, a man must make his way, and apostles do notdespise canonries.
In the same way as there are "gros bonnets," otherwhere, there arelarge mitres in the Church. They are bishops who stand well with theCourt, well endowed, clever, favorites of society, who doubtless knowhow to pray, but also how to solicit, not scrupulous about having awhole diocese waiting in their ante-rooms, connecting links betweenthe sacristy and diplomacy, more abb?s than priests, rather prelatesthan bishops. Happy the man who approaches them! As they stand in goodcredit they shower around them, on the obsequious and their favored,and on all the youth who know the art of pleasing, fat livings,prebends, archdeaconries, chaplaincies, and cathedral appointments,while waiting for episcopal dignities. While themselves advancing, theycause their satellites to progress, and it is an entire solar systemmoving onwards. Their beams throw a purple hue over their suite, andtheir prosperity is showered over the actors behind the scenes innice little bits of promotions. The larger the patron's diocese, thelarger the favorite's living. And then there is Rome. A bishop whocontrives to become an archbishop, an archbishop who manages to becomea cardinal, takes you with him as a Conclavist; you enter the rota, youhave the pallium, you are an auditor, a chamberlain, a Monsignore, andfrom Grandeur to Eminence there is but a step, and between Eminenceand Holiness there is only the smoke of the balloting tickets. Everycassock can dream of the tiara. The priest is in our days the onlyman who can regularly become a king, and what a king! The supremeking! Hence what a hotbed of longings is a seminary! How many blushingchoristers, how many young abb?s, have on their head Perrette'smilk-jar! how easily ambition calls itself a profession! and perhaps itdoes so in good faith and in self-deception, for it is so unworldly.
Monseigneur Welcome, humble, poor, and out of the world, was notcounted among the large mitres. This was visible in the utter absenceof young priests around him. We have seen that at Paris "he did nottake," and not an aspirant tried to cling to this solitary old man; notthe most youthful ambition tried to flourish in his shade. His canonsand vicars were good old men, walled up like him in this diocese whichhad no issue to the Cardinal's hat, and who resembled their bishopwith this difference, that they were finished while he was completed.The impossibility of growing up near Monseigneur Welcome was so wellfelt, that young priests whom he ordained at once obtained letterscommendatory to the Archbishop of Aix, or Auch, and went off at score.For, after all, we repeat, men wish to be pushed upward. A saint wholives in a state of excessive self-denial is a dangerous neighbor, hemight possibly communicate to you by contagion an incurable poverty, astiffening of the joints useful for advancement, and, in a word, morerenunciation than you care for: and such scabby virtue is shunned.Hence came the isolation of Monseigneur Welcome. We live in the midstof a gloomy society. Succeed,--such is the teaching which falls drop bydrop from the corruption hanging over us.
Success is a very hideous thing, and its resemblance with meritdeceives men. For the herd, success has nearly the same profile assupremacy. Success, that twin brother of talent, has a dupe,--history.Tacitus and Juvenal alone grumble at it. In our days an almost officialphilosophy wears the livery of success, and waits in its ante-room.Succeed, that is the theory, for prosperity presupposes capacity.Win in the lottery and you are a clever man, for he who triumphs isrevered. All you want is to be born under a fortunate star. Have luckand you will have the rest, be fortunate and you will be thought agreat man; leaving out five or six immense exceptions, which form thelustre of an age, contemporary admiration is blear-eyedness. Gildingis gold, and it does you no harm to be any one so long as you are theparvenu. The mob is an old Narcissus, adoring itself and applauding themob. That enormous faculty by which a man is a Moses, ?schylus, Dante,Michael Angelo, or Napoleon, the multitude decrees broadcast and byacclamation to any one who attains his object, no matter in what. Leta notary transfigure himself into a deputy; a false Corneille produceTiridates; an eunuch contrive to possess a harem; a military Prudhommeaccidentally gain the decisive battle of an age; an apothecary inventcardboard soles for the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, and make out ofthe cardboard sold for leather an income of 400,000 francs a year; apedler espouse usury and put it to bed with seven or eight millions, ofwhich he is the father and she the mother; a preacher become a bishopby his nasal twang; let the steward of a good family be so rich onleaving service that he is made Chancellor of the Exchequer--and menwill call it genius, in the same way as they call Mousqueton's facebeauty and Claude's mien majesty. They confound with the constellationsof profundity the stars which the duck's feet make in the soft mud ofthe pond.